One thing SEOs were asking Google for for some time now is a report in Google Search Console that tells you about your traffic from Google Discover. Now we have such a report and it is pretty cool to see this new data. We did see this coming numerous times and it is here.
With Google pushing Google Discover after renaming it from Google Feed, then putting the Google Discover feed on the Google mobile home page - this can send you a lot of traffic. But you don't know as a publisher where it is coming from. Yea, if people go to discover.google.com you can see it in your analytics. But if people come from the Google home page or the Google News For You section, you can't really track it. That is, until now.
Where is the Discover report
For sites that get a "meaningful visibility in Discover," Google will show the report in the side bar of Google Search Console, under your performance report:
You will also see it in the overview section, which shows you how much of your overall Google traffic is from search versus discover:
Then when you click into the report, Google shows you clicks, impressions and CTR. At the bottom, you get it broken out by either pages, countries and appearance (which should be AMP):
New Data.
This is brand new data, data we never had in Google Search Console before. Previously, Google Search Console did not report or show any of this data. So this is new data for you to look at said John Mueller:
This was previously not shown in Search Console -- there's no query attached, so it wouldn't be possible to include it in the search performance report. New data for you :)
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) April 10, 2019
Email Notifications.
If you have this report enabled, Google probably emailed you yesterday to let you know. Here is what that email looked like:
Google sent some SEOs way too many emails and they know it and will look to consolidate those emails.
Good feedback, thanks! We moved this way for the mobile-first emails, it sounds like it's worth doing that for other features too.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) April 10, 2019
Ranking Factor
People are asking if this is a ranking factor. No, it is not. I honestly do not fully understand how someone would think that but John said it was not:
i have no idea what that means
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) April 10, 2019
i highly doubt it cc @JohnMu
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) April 10, 2019
Those seem like very different things.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) April 10, 2019
But can sites that do well in search, see improvements with algorithm updates, see better visibility in Google Discover? Probably. I would think there is a certain level of quality you need to meet to show in Google Discover. That is what Glenn Gabe sees:
Well, isn't this interesting. Digging into the Discover reporting for a site that surged during the March Core Update reveals that Discover data spikes then too. So does an algorithmic hit suppress your content from showing up in Discover as well? Looks possible... :) pic.twitter.com/DhabhXjI9j
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) April 10, 2019
So how do you optimize for Google Discover? Well, Google has a document on that - so read about it there. Plus, everything you need to know about the details of this report is in this help document.
Anyway, we now have more data. Are we going to be happy now? Probably not, we always want more. But I am grateful Google keeps adding more to Search Console! Thank you.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
